Motor driven Disk Memory Unit, for Elliott/NRDC 401 Computer MkI, c. 1953

This computer was used for eleven years at the Rothamsted Agricultural Institute for

everything from analysis of crop trials and insect damage to work in the mathematics of

genetics. It was brought there by Frank Yates, a wartime operational researcher who

established Rothamsted as a peacetime statistical computing centre.

Yates had previously worked under the eminent statistician, Ronald Fisher, who laid the

foundation for much of modern statistical research, including randomisation, crucial in

clinical as well as agricultural trials today. Yates himself tirelessly encouraged the use of

statistical analysis in government research.